Six Honest Serving Men
by Pegasus
Summary: A Ninth Doctor retrospective, set in the time period directly before 'Rose'.


**Six Honest Serving Men**

_**Disclaimer: **__The Doctor, the TARDIS and the other locations referred to in this story do not belong to me. (Apart from the little bit of the Earth that I happen to be standing on). The characters and majority of places belong to all those lucky, lucky people who get to own the Doctor Who copyright and write for it all the time. I don't. I get to write for it when inspiration strikes and in a futile effort to empty my head out of these little unseen moments. This story is an entirely non-profit making venture and is in no way meant to impinge on copyright in any way, shape or form._

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_

I never, ever thought that I could get myself into the 'head' of the ninth Doctor, so I was chuffed to bits when this story came to me earlier today out of nowhere. By way of explanation, the Rudyard Kipling quote at the beginning came from my Year Seven science teacher, who told us that by applying those six questions to any situation, you could find the solution.

The other poetry credit goes to the immortal Spike Milligan.

Enjoy. Feedback welcomed.

* * *

_I keep six honest serving-men  
(They taught me all I knew);  
Their names are What and Why and When  
And How and Where and Who.  
-- Rudyard Kipling_

His last, most overriding memory was of running. Running for his life. _You can still make it out alive, _he'd told himself. _You must run!_

And alone, he ran.

There had been excruciating, terrible pain, the kind of pain you only felt when you were dying. He knew the feeling. He'd died before.

Then had come the enveloping blackness, drawing him down into its soft, velvet relief.

Now, his eyes opened.

A glaring white light made him instantly regret that split-second decision and his instincts firmly encouraged him to reconsider and squeeze them tightly shut again. He obeyed his instincts and was rewarded with welcome relief from the brightness.

Memories assailed his semi-conscious senses instead – a multitude of thoughts, emotions and feelings that relentlessly battered at him as a storm batters at a helpless fishing boat lost out at sea. The memories of over nine hundred years of existence created a surprising quantity of what could only be described as 'brain litter'. And right now, all that formerly carefully filed and neatly organised brain litter was in a state of utter, abject chaos. It was as though someone had quite literally entered his mind and thrown files stuffed with memories around with careless abandon. There was a veritable mountain of information in a huge pile in the middle of his recall, and it was presently threatening to collapse on him.

He sifted through the memories with great care and no small amount of trepidation, treating each one as gingerly and carefully as a man handling a crocodile with toothache.

_Right. Get a grip. Begin from first principles. Who am I, and why am I here?_

A pause.

_I think that might just be a bit too existential at this early point in the proceedings. OK, back it up to REAL basics and work forwards from there._

_Who am I?_

A quick rifle through assorted memories dislodged a name, but he dismissed it immediately, aware on some deeper, darker level of subconscious that this particular identity was something that he had long ago chosen to leave behind.

Dig a little deeper.

_You're the Doctor._

Not so much a name, he asserted, as a title. A title he had elected to adopt when he had turned his back on his home...

...home.

The memory slammed into him with an almost relentless, cruel viciousness. Unprepared for the suddenness of such violent recall, the man known as the Doctor gasped audibly.

His home – or at least the place of his birth – was gone. After millenia of conflict, the Daleks and the Time Lords had finally found themselves in a position that could only be described as 'stalemate'.

The bitter-sweet irony was not lost on the Doctor, despite his unease and disorientation. Peace between the Time Lords and the Daleks had come at the ultimate cost. But now, at last, the Daleks had been stopped in their pepper-potted despotic activities once and for all. They were gone. As were, unfortunately, the Time Lords.

Gone.

All gone.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he opened his eyes again. He'd dealt with the 'who' of the current situation. Now time to face the 'where', 'why', 'when' and 'how'. But first, there was another, more pressing matter. Something that needed attention sooner rather than later.

"The what," he said. "As in, what the hell is going on?" The Doctor spoke the words aloud and was startled immediately back into silence by the sound of his own voice. That was _not_ the voice he remembered.

Another frantic rummage through his personal data banks turned up a familiar word.

_Regeneration._

"Again? Hello? Hello? Testing, testing, I'm the Doctor. Mary had a little lamb – what they...?"

Did he have an _accent_? That was a novelty. He flashed a brief grin, despite himself, and recited a poem, a child's nonsense poem he'd picked up on Earth a long time ago.

"_Said the tiny ant  
To the elephant:  
'Mind how you tread in this clearing!'_ Crikey, I sound completely different!" He paused, then resumed.

"_But alas! Cruel fate!  
She was crushed by the weight..._ Did I just pronounce that 'crooshed'? I did!  
_Of an elephant, hard of hearing."_

Silence fell once more.

"Yep. Definitely an accent."

Oddly, he was grateful for the distraction this discovery provided. It gave him enough of a reason to deny the aching truth of what had happened, to begin forming a hard shell around the profound sense of grief and loss that was pervading every sense, the feeling that threatened to overwhelm him in a tide of abject, utter misery.

A moment of meandering distraction.

_Am I even the kind of man who does misery?_

_If I stay on board this particular train of thought, the answer to that question is somewhere between 'yes' and 'definitely'. All aboard the 5.15 express train to Complete Insanityville! Tickets, please!_

_Time, I think, to disembark._

The Doctor got himself back, metaphorically speaking at least, on track.

_So. To recap. I am the Doctor. I am a Time Lord. I have just escaped the Time War and, I suspect, not __entirely_ _unrelated to that, I have just regenerated for the eighth time – which, all things taken into consideration and being equal and opposite and all that sort of stuff, is either very, very fortunate, or decidedly clumsy of me. I have clearly just regained consciousness after an unspecified period of time. I am, therefore, the ninth incarnation of myself. Hello, me, meet me. Fantastic. That definitely takes care of the 'who' and, to a lesser, but no less critical degree, the 'what' as well._

_Now for the 'where'._

He got himself up into a sitting position and blinked in the light that had permeated his post-regenerative haze. Looking around, he felt a sense of undeniable familiarity, of fondness – of simple _belonging_. A tired, but genuine smile lit his face.

"Hello, old girl."

He was inside his beloved TARDIS. Just how he'd ended up here was almost secondary to the fact that the pair of them were no longer just renegades from Gallifrey.

They were now all that was left.

As if in response to his voice, the garish, bright white light softened to something entirely more friendly and welcoming. The TARDIS suffused with a soft, greenish tinge and through its eternal heartbeat, he felt a gentle thrum of delight at his conscious presence. He put his hands on the console and pulled himself upright. The sudden change in altitude made him a little dizzy and he gripped at the console. The constant throb of the console, which he could now feel beneath his hands, changed pitch to something almost querying.

"I'm fine," he reassured, patting the console absently. "I'm fine. I'm...quite tall. That's good. I like tall." He glanced down. Yes. Definitely taller – and broader – than his previous self, anyway. At least judging from the fact that he seemed to be a good five inches taller than his trousers promised, and the fact that he seemed to be in possession of an interesting 'gape' effect in the shirt department.

"Add that onto the 'who' list," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'll sort some clothing out later. Let's deal with the 'where', shall we? Present company excepted, where am I?" He patted the console again and the querying tone to the TARDIS's gentle background hum dissolved into soothing vibrations. The Doctor tapped at the video screen and examined the graceful, elegant curves of Gallifreyan script that shifted and changed under his hands. His eyes widened, his hearts pounded and the earlier nausea gave way to a sense of something entirely different.

"These galactic coordinates," he said the TARDIS. "You brought me here all by yourself?"

A faint flare in the green tinge that the Doctor understood to be an affirmation of his question. "Primary Emergency Protocol Theta Sigma," he said, and his voice was thick with emotion. "You couldn't take me home, because home has...well, home has gone. So you took me to the only other place I could ever call home. You're a clever old thing, aren't you?"

A pink tinge to the glow made the Doctor smile with great affection.

Earth.

That wonderful, infuriating, unbelievably backward little planet known in some circles as Sol 3. The place that had given him sanctuary when the universe itself would no longer accept him. The place that he'd necessarily called 'home' for so long, so many years ago now.

Earth.

The place that had provided him with some of the most stimulating – and frustrating – companionship he'd ever known. The place that had given him a taste for beer and ready salted potato crisps. The place that no matter how hard he tried to leave behind always drew him back into its fond embrace. The planets old mythology often called her 'Mother Earth', and the analogy was fitting. There was something oddly nurturing about the place. Just think of them. Mankind. Running about on the surface of the little blue planet like a billion, billion little ants. So much life teeming away down there.

Again, that rushing sensation of terrible, dreadful loneliness. He was the last of his kind.

_So much death_.

_The last of the Time Lords._

He could not, at this time, reconcile the enormity of those six words with the churning emotions that he was still refusing to acknowledge, so he pushed it firmly to the back of his mind. _Perhaps_, he thought, with great unreasonableness, _if I don't think about it, it isn't happening_.

"We have the 'who'," he said, firmly tapping at the console with a long finger. "And the 'what'. Well, sort of the 'what'. And now we have the 'where'. So the 'when' is easy enough...yes, there we go."

Three keystrokes gave him the answer to that question and also specified the 'where' for him a little more: Earth. Early twenty first century – 2004 to be precise. Not fully materialised yet, but with a programmed final destination point of somewhere in London. The TARDIS, demonstrating yet again that wonderful level of sentience that he'd come to love over the years, had cautiously remained within the time vortex, choosing to maintain her position, waiting to monitor and see what had happened, rather than throw herself with great gusto into the middle of a heaving city centre.

The Doctor grinned and reached up to run a hand through his hair – which he discovered was rather more close-cut than he'd ever had before. He _liked_ London. It had that sort of raging sense of organised chaos that was so very indicative of the human psyche. He leaned back a little from the console and exhaled a breath that he'd not even realised until that moment that he was holding.

"Four down," he said. "Two to go. 'How' and 'why'." He stared up at the ceiling of the TARDIS, impossibly far away above him and shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure," he admitted, "that I can deal with either of those just yet. Let's leave those out of the equation, shall we? Especially the 'why'."

A flash of visions passed behind his eyelids again, causing him to swallow back a lump of raw emotion that threatened to choke him. _The Time War_, he thought, feeling a swelling surge of rage that burst forth from him in a moment of pure anger, culminating in him turning and slamming his fist into the wall of the TARDIS, which emitted a faint grind of indignant disapproval. _I failed them all. And this is my punishment._

"Well, no more," he muttered. "No more getting attached. From now on, I operate alone. Let's see what's going on down there, shall we? There's always _something_ happening on Earth." He flicked a few switches, pressed a few buttons, twirled a few random knobs and pulled a lever or two for good measure. It was like conducting an orchestra and the old, familiar movements brought him a modicum of comfort.

It turned out that his generalisation about the activity that so often surrounded Earth was not wrong on this occasion, and the readings that the TARDIS duly presented to him were almost pleasurable in a faintly macabre way. An excuse to go down to the planet, to mingle with humans again. They were so _primitive_ and yet at times, there were these amazing flashes of inspiration, these incredible displays of raw courage and genius that endeared them as a race to the Doctor's hearts. It was why he had acquired so many companions over the years from the planet...

A flare of hope.

_Perhaps..._

Had he not known better, he'd have sworn that the prompt came from the TARDIS herself.

"No," he said, firmly. "No. Just...no. Let's go check this out. But first, clothing."

In the past, he had always let his instincts guide him around the wardrobe room of the TARDIS, finding the outfit that best suited his personality and mood at the time of regeneration. When he emerged, after barely fifteen minutes, he was clad in black. Dark trousers, dark shirt and a black leather jacket that had definitely seen better days. He liked it. It felt _right_. It was, quintessentially, _him_.

He didn't bother with the mirror. He didn't want to know just yet. The memory of who he had been was still too raw. He couldn't prod at that wound just yet. It would wait. It was good enough for now that he was alive.

Thus clad, the Doctor studied the interesting, faintly anomalous readings and set coordinates for the source.

"Let's go save the world," he said.

An hour later, he was on _terra firma_ and there was a part of him that wished he'd just stayed unconscious in the time vortex. Department stores were, to his clinically ordered (and now generally re-filed) mind, almost entirely congruous with the human race. The Doctor had visited any number of planets during his extended lifetime and there had always been shops. Trade, even on the most primitive of planets, was a must, a way of life. But nowhere else in the universe had he come across a shop where you could buy cookware on one floor, and mere steps away from the latest in ceramic potware, you could select from a vast array of socks and underpants.

It was almost endearingly eccentric. Almost as amusing as twenty-four hour supermarkets. Only geniuses, idiots and drunks wanted to buy washing up liquid at four in the morning.

He felt a rush of warmth for the human race, bless them.

The signal was strong in here, no doubt about it. The sonic screwdriver had practically screamed with excitement when he'd activated it. Perfunctorily, he performed a low-level scan of the building and sucked air in over his teeth in irritation. There were, besides himself, two other life signs registering in the building, both in the basement, which was just out-and-out annoying. Why didn't human beings just go home when they should? He tempered the moment of grouchiness by considering that a department store this size was more likely than not going to have some sort of security guard in place.

Probably two, if the readings were right.

For no readily apparent reason, it annoyed him that there were still humans in the building. _Trust humans to get in the way._

Without them there, the plan was devastatingly simple. Find the signal, interrupt the signal, destroy the signal. A. B. C. As simple as it got. Of course, there was a distinct possibility that he might just destroy himself along with the signal, but what the heck. He was feeling reckless. Reckless and stupid.

It felt _fantastic_.

However, he felt a faint sense of responsibility nag at him and grudgingly accepted that he needed to get them out. It would be a simple enough thing to location them: it would be entirely another thing to encourage them to leave. In his experience, humans never just left. They spent far too long saying 'why', or 'who are you' or 'what do you mean the building's going to explode' to just do what they were told.

It was with some surprise, therefore, when one of the two life signs winked out. Either they had just left the building by some hitherto unknown access point in the basement, or whatever was here threatening Hendricks' Department Store, Purveyors of Inordinate Amounts of Pointless Junk was far more sinister than on first inspection. He concentrated his efforts with renewed vigour on finding the other occupant of the building.

When he did, it would set in motion a chain of events that would change his life forever.

She couldn't have been a great deal older then eighteen, twenty at the most, and afterwards, for a very long time afterwards, he wondered just what it had been that had made him reach for her hand in the way he had. He had grinned at her terrified, bemused face and watched as she tore her attention away from the encroaching menace and instead stared directly into the eyes of the Oncoming Storm.

He wasn't sure in that moment which was the greater threat to her. In the months to come, he was _never_ fully sure. But that was in the time to come. This was the here, this was the now.

This was _life_.

"Run," he said.

And together, they ran.

* * *

(c) S Cawkwell, 2008


End file.
